Using dictation to create narrative content placed in the EHR can positively impact cost, quality and patient experience. CEO Randy Olver discusses the benefits, requirements and success stories of documenting with dictation in "The Hybrid Approach" featured in the October issue of Health Management Technology.

Today, Emdat announced the release of a whiteboard animation video illustrating what we've always believed — that using dictation to create documentation in the EHR is the best use of the clinician's time. As EHRs become more prevalent, many clinicians are required to use point-and-click and front-end speech recognition to document — methods that have been shown to be more time consuming and impair the patient experience. The video spells out Emdat deliverables — maximizing clinician productivity and reducing documentation costs all while supporting meaningful use.

Documentation is not a one-size-fits-all model, and return on investment (ROI) is not a straightforward calculation. Organizations must keep individual physician work habits in mind — along with tangible and intangible costs — to select the best method of information capture for the practice. Each method of patient encounter documentation in an EHR has its benefits and drawbacks. Read more in Getting the Most From Your Documentation Dollars, an eNews exclusive from the For the Record newsletter.

As EHR adoption rates continue to steadily climb, the required adjustments to clinicians' daily routines and processes often lead to reduced efficiency and low satisfaction rates. A hybrid approach — using a combination of dictation and templates to automatically populate discrete data within the EHR — allows the system to capture more detailed narrative information in an efficient and cost-effective way. Read A Hybrid Approach in a recent issue of the Advance For Healthcare Professionals to learn more about the benefits of this method of clinical data capture.

St. Cloud Orthopedics in Sartell, Minnesota earned $342,000 in Medicare incentive payments by successfully meeting meaningful use while dictating. As the article in the June 2013 issue of AAOS Now details, David L. Kaus, MD and practice administrator Bill Worzala reviewed and refused point-and-click, templated EHR systems due to the productivity impact. Instead, they chose to employ a hybrid approach, which uses a combination of dictation and templates to automatically populate discrete data within the EHR. With this approach, physicians aren't required to keep clicking during patient encounters to create the documentation, but rather, can keep the focus on productivity while helping us attest to meaningful use.